Stockholm, 1993
by gardapati
Summary: If she were to describe the whole ordeal, it's got to be a fairy tale in reverse. — Niko/Maki, AU.


If she were to describe the whole ordeal, it's gotta be a fairy tale in reverse.

Sure, there were no dates, no cuddles in the dead of the night, no ritual of exchanging the magical three words, no kisses. They'd been something – _lovers_, _girlfriends_, _not-girlfriends, lovers, star-crossed lovers _– and nothing at the same time. There had never been 'why' or 'how' or 'when' or '_why_' or '_how_' –

only '_because_', '_that's just how it is_', and '_we're_ (not)_ meant to be together_'.

* * *

><p>They met in a situation unlike any others. God penned their story under acid and depression and decided to put the both of them (a young aristrocrate and a street rat slash criminal mastermind, and how was this supposed to be anything resembling a fairy tale?) under a pressing circumstance, a <em>freakin' <em>kidnapping. Nishikino Maki had always dreamed of getting her feet swept by a nobleman, good looks and gentle manner and a nation under his fingertips. A smile akin to that of a prince charming. But the universe detested naïveté, or maybe just _her_. She waited for a gentleman; she got herself a serial kidnapper.

Yazawa Niko under the pseudonym of _252 _was anything but all of those qualities she wished, she hoped, she prayed for, she dreamed. Yazawa Niko was a serial kidnapper, looks that was a dime in a dozen and all criminal records and every nook and cranny of the street under her very hands. A smile that leaned a little to the left. She smelled of blood and sweat and the dull stench of money.

Maki closed her eyes, preparing for what would come. She imagined the sight of a corpse and cash scattered around the dusty floor and tears that belonged to whom.

* * *

><p>"Where," Maki managed to choke out, what with the dimly lit room and the low ceiling and her back against the wall and her unfamiliarity of the whole place, "where am I."<p>

The figure before her crouched. She held out a hand, slowly reaching out to her face (gloved in black cheap leather and smelled of dusts) – Maki slapped her hand away and resisted the urge to scream out. She blissfully thanked her own self-restraint.

Maki found herself looking at Niko looking at her and they stared in a sickening silence for a good fifteen minutes (_or an hour, or a year, or a century – she had lost track of the time itself as she psycho-analyzed the criminal and ended up with exactly nothing_). She didn't get a clear view of her kidnapper besides her being a girl and her small stature, the features fit the characteristics of the famed 252 just fine.

What she didn't expect is for 252 to mutter something completely unimaginable that left her speechless for a second, "Sorry," she mumbled in a voice so soft and girlish and totally unlike the ruthless kidnapper medias and her mansion guards described her to be.

"Let me out." Maki said, trying to not sound cracky and broken. "Release me."

Yazawa Niko sighed and stood back up, towering over her who's sitting still, and replied to her with: "Sorry, rich-pants, but I can't do that."

"Wh, why?!"

She watched Niko walking towards the door, a silver key dangling from her index finger, probably the one she used to lock her up in here. "Not now, at least. Don't worry though, let's just hope your parents will bring the cash in five days and you'll be freed."

"Hey, wait up –"

"Until then," Niko said, before closing the door, "see ya."

* * *

><p>The first night was the hardest. Maki cried silent tears and longed for her home more than anything else. Her parents would definitely save her of course, it was just a matter of time. Then they will send the damned criminal behind the bars and she will live happily ever after. She slept with the cold biting her as her mini-dress didn't do enough job of keeping her warm and cozy. She dreamt of herself rotting in her makeshift cage. She woke up with cold sweats.<p>

The next morning Niko brought in a slice of bread and a glass of water.

"And how would I know whether the bread was poisoned or not?" She gave the shorter girl an evil eye, not at all touching her breakfast.

Niko groaned, and crawled closer to her with her breakfast in hand. "Your parents won't pay for a corpse of their beloved daughter, ya know."

There was a silence, the tension was oppressive and their gazes locked in a staring contest. Once again Maki found herself peering into her the eyes of her kidnapper. There was something different about the pair of red who was probably in-process of rummaging through her soul.

Niko let out a sharp sigh in exasperation and crouched to Maki's height. "Just eat it already, will you!" Maki opened her mouth to retort only to have her mouth shut by the bread, forcing its way in. "I can't let you starve, ya know. Just how _heartless _do you think am I?"

She gasped, trying to catch her breath after dry-swallowing a mouthful of her breakfast. She scowled at Niko and flicked a stray strand of her hair out of her eyes.

"Why did you," she mumbled, loud enough for the figure draped in black cape to hear.

"Cause I'm not a _freakin' _evil incarnate, that's why!"

Maki quirks an eyebrow, because kidnappers don't feed their hostage something clean and healthy. Because what Niko did to her wasn't in the warnings her parents gave her. Because she trusted what's in the light, not a figure in black that reeked of the underworld itself.

"But you're a _kidnapper_."

"I am," Niko hands Maki the glass of water, gently, as if afraid to break the glass (_or maybe, the girl, who knows?_) and Maki reluctantly cupped the glass with her hands, "but not the bad kind. C'mon, drink up already! I didn't poison your drink, alright?"

Maki rolled her eyes, snorted, then took a gulp of the water, and curious whether she'll come out alive the next morning. She did.

* * *

><p>"You know, for someone who's supposedly <em>kidnapping <em>me, you don't act like one."

"Maybe I'm just waiting for the worst possible moment to, you know, do things that you had always imagined a kidnapper would do."

Maki inched away from a tray of breakfast in front of her, hugging her knees protectively. Niko noticed the gesture and wordlessly forced a spoonful of warm soup to her mouth. A struggle later, Maki wordlessly downed the liquid, tasting bland and generic.

Niko quirked an eyebrow. "You want me to spoonfeed you or what, Princess?"

"I don't!"

* * *

><p>"You know," she asked one day, with the pitter-pattering of rain serving as their accompaniment, "why are you doing this?"<p>

Niko's eyebrow shot up in response. It's the way she stood there, propped against the wall, her back slightly slouched, her hair tied in girlish pigtails that looked so out of place, her frown leaning a little to the right. It's the way she treated everything with nonchalance that drove Maki insane. As if everything was just a game to her, when she herself had her future and dream and, maybe, her _life _on the line.

So, Maki raised her tone, face contorted in scowl. She had been doing a lot of scowling nowadays. "The whole..._thing_," she pointed to her then to the wooden floor, "kidnapping me. Is everything just a plaything to you?"

"It isn't, you idiot! You're making me sound like I'm a psychopath."

"Then why, Yazawa Niko – "

"I have my own reasons, alright," she snapped, closing her eyes shut while her fists tightened, her knuckles turning angry red, "things that someone like you will _never _understand."

They chat for a while, jumping from topics to topics, and it felt like the world is just – the two of them, and the small room with low ceiling and dimly lit light source of a puny candle. Maki learned things about Yazawa Niko, like the fact that she had siblings, and one of them was gravely sick. She learned that outside, the police force is after Niko's tail, probably under the commands of her parents. She learned that the crime she committed are all for a small poor orphanage beside the church, and they were actually there all along. A chuckle escaped her lips and by the end of the day (_then again, she didn't know whether it's nighttime outside or not, but it felt like so_) she started calling Niko 'Robin Hood'. Niko grimaced at her new nick but made no effort to stop her hostage from calling her so.

"Is there no other way, other than kidnapping people and asking for ransom money?"

Niko crossed her arms and huffed in response, "C'mon, not everyone have everything they want and need handed to them on silver platter. You have a future, Princess. All I have is the present itself. I'll just have to make do with what I have."

"Yazawa Niko..."

"The world may be cruel, but all you can do is live on, you know? It's better than dying anyway. Really, I _really _hate my life and all, but that doesn't mean I'll just submit to the world as it is. I don't want to live a life of poverty, waiting for someone to save my butt and throw me a little penny. I've _gotta _do something. My little siblings can't feed themselves ya know. Anyway, just call me Niko already, no need to be so formal!"

* * *

><p>"Anyway, sleep tight, alright, <em>Princess<em>?" Niko said, with her back turned against her. "Just a little while longer, pretty sure your parents will bring in the cash, everybody lives, and all's well that ends well."

"Fine, fine, _Robin Hood_."

"Sheeesh,"

* * *

><p>"Heard the gossiping ladies down there in the market; your parents paid Detective El to track me down."<p>

"Detective El – _the _famed Ayase Eri?" Maki recalled the woman she had seen on newspapers. Perfect record. Sleek white long coat. Cold, unrelenting eyes. Utter brilliance. A genius.

"That girl's the _real _psychopath!"

Ayase Eri. Tell her to go look for a criminal, expect the _body _of said criminal instead. She shot Niko a look, all worried and sad and _despaired_, like the way her brows crinkled in thoughts and worst case scenarios, and the way her hands gripping the hem of her dress tightly, and the way her mouth hung half-open, half-closed. She laughed bitterly, and the phrase '_sympathy for the Devil_' voiced itself on her mind, slowly taking a form and relinquished her of the fair calm that had been there until Niko dropped the news. She leaned forward, accusatory, trying to keep her emotion in check, "You're lying."

"I'm _not_," Niko leaned forward to her this time, and they were just a hair-breadth away each other, "and stop looking at me as if I'm a dead man already!"

Maki gritted her teeth hard (_and tried to push the thought of kissing those small, pale pink lips of Yazawa Niko, because, you know, that's just wrong and this was not some kind of an _effin' _fairy tale!_), because Niko was not much of a pretender, and the shaking in her voice wasn't that well-hid, and white will swallow black as a whole and there was _nothing _she can do about it.

* * *

><p>There was the sound of a door struck down and the banging of wooden furniture pushed aside, and incoherent taunts shout, and. She watched Niko rose to her feet and she choked out a mechanical laugh.<p>

"Well, here they are,"

"Mm-hm." Maki was almost giggling, almost crying, almost pleading for the other girl to stop being acting so brave like she could take on even the craziest of upturns.

"Stay here, alright? It's safer here."

"Okay."

"And – anyway, listen, whatever happened outside, do _not _go by yourself unless someone come to you." Maki noted the word 'someone' and asked to herself why it can't be 'I', as in, Yazawa Niko herself.

"Understood."

Niko paused, then fished out something of her pocket. "Take this."

"A pocket watch?" She inspected the object in her hand, a pocket watch made of cheap bronze; its chains had rusts here and there. It wasn't the finest of gift, but. The clock read _12:48._

"13:00. I'll come back here in 13:00, alright?"

"Sure."

"Just you wait, Nishikino."

"It's Maki, you idiot."

"Sheesh, alright, alright! Maki."

* * *

><p><em>13:00<em>. There was a blare of a gunshot and the noise of something tumbling to the floor, but no scream of agony or anything like that. Maki covered her ears until she couldn't hear a thing because it was better that way.

* * *

><p><em>13:02<em>. The door opened and two figures in white cloak came in, one of them sporting a familiar blond hair. The other, the one with violet hair was unfamiliar to Maki, but there was something off about her, whats with her white cloak smeared with dull red, and the sharp stench coming from her.

"It's alright, everything's all right now, Miss Nishikino." Ayase Eri said to her, hand oustretched, and the three of them stepped out of the small room, leaving a half-eaten loaf of bread and an emptied glass of water behind.

* * *

><p>Maki discovered the sight of a corpse and cash scattered around the dusty floor and tears that belonged to her.<p>

* * *

><p><strong>Notes<strong>: [1] I'm truly sorry.

[2] Written in a rush! Please tell me if you spot a typo or a grammatical mistake. Thank you for reading! Reviews are appreciated.


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